Battle against GMOs: Update

“2,4-D was one of the very first her­bi­cides, intro­duced in the 1940s,” Freese said. “It was orig­i­nally looked at in the con­text of World War II, dur­ing which the mil­i­tary was search­ing for herbicides—which had just been dis­cov­ered at that time—to destroy the rice crop in Japan. Twenty years later in Vietnam, 2,4-D was com­bined with 2,4,5-T to make Agent Orange. Millions of gal­lons of Agent Orange were sprayed all over Vietnam, caus­ing immense health harm to Vietnamese and to US sol­diers. This is a bad-news herbicide.

“It’s asso­ci­ated with a num­ber of dis­eases such as non-Hodgkin’s lym­phoma, which is can­cer of the immune sys­tem. Farmers espe­cially who are exposed to it have higher risks of dis­ease, includ­ing Parkinson’s dis­ease, for which links have been estab­lished. 2,4-D is also an endocrine disrupter.”

Another major threat from the approval of 2,4-D-resistant corn is to neigh­bor­ing farms. “2,4-D is very volatile and it drifts a lot,” Freese explained. “When you spray a her­bi­cide it can drift hun­dreds of yards, and in some cases even more, to land on a neighbor’s crops. In the end 2,4-D is going to kill a large num­ber of crops that aren’t resis­tant to it. There are many grow­ers who are con­cerned about this because, with 2,4-D-resistant crops, there’s going to be a big increase in 2,4-D use. Already 2,4-D is the most fre­quently reported cause of crop injury from drift. With the intro­duc­tion of 2,4-D corn, those crop injury episodes are going to skyrocket.”

In a ter­ri­ble case of irony, 2,4-D-resistant corn is being touted as a solu­tion for farm­ers who are plagued by “super­weeds” that have grown resis­tant to Monsanto’s Roundup her­bi­cide. “We’ve got a whole epi­demic of Roundup-resistant weeds due to the wide­spread plant­ing of Roundup Ready crops and the increase in use of Roundup,” Freese con­tin­ued. “These 2,4-D crops are being intro­duced as the sup­posed solu­tion to Roundup-resistant weeds.

“What they’re not telling farm­ers is that they’re going to rapidly have weeds that are resis­tant to 2,4-D as well. In fact, they’re try­ing to gloss over the whole sit­u­a­tion and say it won’t hap­pen, when we know there’s good sci­ence that says it will. You can see where this leads: first it’s Roundup resis­tance, then it’s 2,4-D resis­tance; Monsanto has dicamba-resistant crops, and all of these com­pa­nies have herbicide-resistant crops that they’re work­ing on. I call it a ‘chem­i­cal arms race with weeds’—you make crops with more resis­tances to more dif­fer­ent types of her­bi­cides, and then the weeds develop mul­ti­ple resistances.”

Dow 2,4-D-resistant corn will be a com­mod­ity corn, which means it won’t be sold as fresh corn; but it will be used in processed foods con­sumed by humans, as well as in cat­tle feed.

This crop is up for approval with the USDA, and they are cur­rently accept­ing com­ments from the pub­lic. “If the past is any guide, the USDA will approve the corn,” said Freese. “Their ini­tial envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment, for what it’s worth, is open for pub­lic com­ment until the end of April. We need to get as many com­ments as pos­si­ble to make approval harder to do. And we’ve already announced that we’ll chal­lenge any approval in court.”

Monsanto Sweet Corn

Another cam­paign being run through the Center for Food Safety is urg­ing con­sumers to protest the pos­si­ble accep­tance of Monsanto GMO sweet corn for sale in Walmart stores. If accep­tance occurs, this would be the first broad launch of fresh GMO corn into the marketplace.

This corn has been genet­i­cally engi­neered to con­tain Bacillus thuringien­sis, or Bt, a nat­u­rally occur­ring bac­terium that, in con­cen­trated com­pounds, is used as an insec­ti­cide. The corn has been bred with the addi­tional trait of being resis­tant to Roundup herbicide.

“The insec­ti­ci­dal pro­teins in Bt corn could cause aller­gies and have not been assessed ade­quately,” Freese warned. “In fact advi­sors to the EPA said, back in 2000, that these pro­teins could be caus­ing food aller­gies and we really needed more study. The EPA basi­cally just ignored that warn­ing and has pretty much not funded research into this ques­tion. The very lit­tle research they did fund, with a sci­en­tist named I. L. Bernstein, found that work­ers had devel­oped signs of aller­gic reac­tions to Bt pro­teins used as sprays. He said that Bt corn could be caus­ing the same prob­lems and that addi­tional test­ing was required to inves­ti­gate this fur­ther. The EPA never gave him any more funds. The EPA likes Bt corn a lot because they feel it reduces chem­i­cal insec­ti­cide use, and that’s why they’ve mostly shut down look­ing closely at it for health impacts.”

What prob­lems do the Roundup Ready traits cause? “This trait allows farm­ers to spray the her­bi­cide directly on the crop,” Freese said. “If you do that with a con­ven­tional vari­ety, you kill it, espe­cially with a her­bi­cide as potent as glyphosate [the active ingre­di­ent in Roundup]. You can have greater lev­els of her­bi­cide residues on the crop than you would with a con­ven­tional vari­ety. In sev­eral cases with herbicide-resistant crops, com­pa­nies have gone to the EPA to get an increase in what they call ‘tolerance’—the legal max­i­mum amount of residue that can be on a crop. With the herbicide-resistant vari­eties, the com­pa­nies have often got­ten the EPA to grant tol­er­ance increases.”

Public protest could def­i­nitely keep Monsanto GMO sweet corn from mak­ing it to mar­ket. “I think that the super­mar­kets and the food proces­sors are very con­cerned about pub­lic opin­ion,” Freese remarked. “They’re con­stantly try­ing to appeal to the pub­lic; so the more pub­lic con­cern that is shown with Walmart and other com­pa­nies, the bet­ter our chances of stop­ping this and future genet­i­cally engi­neered crops.

Importance of Labeling

“Right now, GMO corn is already used in highly processed foods,” Freese pointed out. “I think that’s one rea­son the biotech com­pa­nies are so opposed to label­ing of GMO foods, because this would get the word out to peo­ple. It really does take you right to the whole label­ing issue and how we need label­ing so that peo­ple can make their own decisions

“People need to be able to know what’s in their food. More and more they also want to know how the food is pro­duced. Maybe they would see a label on a food prod­uct and say, ‘You know, I don’t want to sup­port that kind of agri­cul­ture; it has GM ingredients.’”

As we have been report­ing, pub­lic aware­ness is higher than ever before on GMOs, and the USDA, EPA and other gov­ern­ment agen­cies will soon be forced to face the truth about them. Until then, it is up to us to con­tinue mak­ing our voices heard through our food choices and votes.

For more infor­ma­tion on spe­cific GMO top­ics, as well as cam­paigns to pre­vent them and how you can take part, visit www.centerforfoodsafety.org.